Needless to say, he's definitely not considered a right-winger here in the US. But I understand that the whole of the US is considered more right-wing than some other places.

Well that's only because the top of the republican party now exists of grade A insane asylum inmates. The paradigm has shifted immensely. the only reason a lot of americans see Obama as a moderate/leftist is because of the media propaganda on the television and the complete insanity of right wingers like Palin and Santorum. Obama might not be considered a right winger, but he certainly is.

Santorum actually favors a pretty fair degree of state involvement in economic matters, nearly as extensively as he does in the personal and international spheres. This is typically true of most Republican politicians, especially those high up on the party ladder, but Santorum goes quite a bit further than milquetoast 'defenders' of 'free markets'.

Haha, when asked if Syria could do anything to avoid a U.S. military strike, Kerry said yeah, they could give up and destroy all their chemical weapons. He later clarified that it was a hypothetical scenario, but it was too late: Russia and Syria simply said "sure, let's do that" and essentially fucked Obama's plans in the arse. I love it.

Hah, USA was late to the party. So that means the States won't be attacking Syria anymore? I don't see how they would benefit from that attack by the way, besides as cementing their status as the World Police.

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Acrobat wrote:

it's better to have Lemmed and lost than to have never Lemmed at all..

I doubt Assad is going to turn over his weapons and even if he does, it will be almost impossible to verify he has turned over all of them. Qaddafi allegedly destroyed his entire arsenal of mustard gas years ago and yet when NATO intervened in 2011 they found he had still been hiding some, eight years later. Nobody knew until he fell; verification for this sort of thing is harder than it is for nukes. Not to mention it takes time if you want to do it properly; the U.S. has been destroying its chemical arsenal for like twenty years and we still haven't finished. For an arsenal as large as Assad's is believed to be, estimates right now are it would take more than ten years and require 1,000 people to verify it. I don't see how that can happen in a civil war scenario.

Unless Assad and the rebels agree to a ceasefire to let weapons inspectors in, or unless the goal is to simply take the weapons out of Syria, this isn't going to happen. Assad ignored the last two ceasefires and the Al-Qaeda elements of the rebels probably will ignore any new one too. And from Assad's perspective, the Nusra Front apparently already has chems (definitely chlorine, possibly small amounts of sarin as well), so there's an element of reciprocity here.

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iamntbatman wrote:

On Friday I passed an important milestone in my teaching career: a student shat himself

Haha, when asked if Syria could do anything to avoid a U.S. military strike, Kerry said yeah, they could give up and destroy all their chemical weapons. He later clarified that it was a hypothetical scenario, but it was too late: Russia and Syria simply said "sure, let's do that" and essentially fucked Obama's plans in the arse. I love it.

Hah, USA was late to the party. So that means the States won't be attacking Syria anymore? I don't see how they would benefit from that attack by the way, besides as cementing their status as the World Police.

I think there might be a propagandistic element. It is a proven way to get young people that don't have a perspective off the streets and out of the job-centers, and give them something resembling a purpose, even if that means they ultimately fight and die pointlessly in a remote country. War also fuels the whole patriotism business. Sure, when it lasts too long people tend to get critical, that's why there needs to be a new one every couple of years. And where would the arms industry be if there were no wars?

I think there might be a propagandistic element. It is a proven way to get young people that don't have a perspective off the streets and out of the job-centers, and give them something resembling a purpose, even if that means they ultimately fight and die pointlessly in a remote country. War also fuels the whole patriotism business. Sure, when it lasts too long people tend to get critical, that's why there needs to be a new one every couple of years. And where would the arms industry be if there were no wars?

Usual paranoid antijingoism. I can't speak for France but there is no sense of patriotism or specific purpose associated with any prospective action in Syria, just millions of angry constituents calling their representatives to say "HELL NO." Among those who have mentioned their internal polling to the press, I don't think there has been a single senator or representative who has fielded more than a 10% positive response towards a Syrian-American war from his or her constituents. Everyone who has spoken about this has said it's like 90% of those who call, fax, mail, email or walk in to their district offices is against U.S. involvement. I know one Michigan representative said in his district they calculated initial support for the president's airstrike at 2%.

There's no propaganda element to this and there's no real domestic political benefit to the president either. He has gotten slammed by nearly everyone. Obama has to be doing this because he genuinely believes it's the right thing to do, if he really was doing it for propaganda or popularity reasons he would have reversed course last week or earlier, because the backlash was immediate and remains persistent.

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iamntbatman wrote:

On Friday I passed an important milestone in my teaching career: a student shat himself

if he really was doing it for propaganda or popularity reasons he would have reversed course last week or earlier, because the backlash was immediate and remains persistent.

So he's not doing it for propaganda. But that doesn't mean a war, should it happen, won't be utilized for propagandistic purposes.

Earthcubed wrote:

Obama has to be doing this because he genuinely believes it's the right thing to do

Bullshit. There's probably a horde of advisors from the military, industry and whatnot that tell him exactly what to do.

.....except the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Secretary as recently as July were opposed to military action in Syria. As are most other generals and former generals who have taken a public stance. He's willing to ignore them, just like he did with Libya (Defense Secretary, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, commander of CENTCOM, and if I remember correctly the commander of AFRICOM were all opposed to military action in Libya).

The current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs admitted before the Senate Armed Services Committee just last week that he doesn't know what Obama's objective is in Syria.

Well you can't honestly believe that he's doing it because he thinks it's the right thing. It wouldn't be bad politics as much as it would simply be illogical. Industry it is then.

(Implying the lizard jews are not telling him what to do) But seriously I can not think why he would want to invade Syria, there is no gain for the US and his popularity level is dropping. If he is really doing it for "the children" he is the same as every 15 year old girl on Facebook who wants the US to go into Syria. And in reply to what someone else said I do not know why the military would want to go in either. Now I know this probably is not true but what if Israel wanted Assad to fall and a rebel leader to come into power. Then the government would be weak so Israel could take over Syria and turn it into part of Israel.

Well you can't honestly believe that he's doing it because he thinks it's the right thing. It wouldn't be bad politics as much as it would simply be illogical. Industry it is then.

I think that the only reason he's doing it is because of the "red line" remark he made. Now he has to follow through, or at least look like he is. I think that the plan to destroy all the weapons is a godsend for him, since the idea of a military strike has proved to be so unpopular.

RainbowPrius19 wrote:

droneriot wrote:

What?

Are you saying "what" because what I wrote did not make sense or because the idea is ridiculous?

Ridiculous. Why the fuck would Israel want a country full of a hostile population that gives them no strategic advantage?

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DullMetalJacket wrote:

Makes me wanna learn some Burzum songs on guitar, record a video of me playing them, send him a message, be like, "wassup nigga? check out mah mo'fuckin remix".

Less than 12 years ago the prime minister of Israel was the same defense minister who oversaw the incredible mess and (for the U.S.) unavenged tragedy that was the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980's. I don't think Israel has forgotten what happens when Jews occupy a country dominated by warring factions of Muslims. I mean, the Shi'a in Lebanon initially welcomed the Israeli invasion because they thought it would drive the Sunnis out, but people who aren't supposed to be killed always die anyway in war, and if you do that for long enough in a country that isn't yours you can expect your friends to turn hostile. As it is, Hezbollah probably would not exist if Israel had stayed out of Lebanon. They don't want to accidentally create any more anti-Israeli terror groups.

And Lebanon didn't have chemical weapons for the different factions to grab. And it didn't share a border with a religious quasi-democracy who's prime special operations units are largely dedicated to asymmetric warfare with Israel. And it's smaller than Syria. An Israeli occupation of Syria would be just about the dumbest thing Israel could do right now.

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iamntbatman wrote:

On Friday I passed an important milestone in my teaching career: a student shat himself

Well you can't honestly believe that he's doing it because he thinks it's the right thing. It wouldn't be bad politics as much as it would simply be illogical. Industry it is then.

This notion that presidents are automatons that do whatever various interest groups tell them is very simplistic. In the case of the defense industry, while it is true they would have something to gain, the reality is that the Pentagon and the wider intelligence community is more distrustful of private contractors than they've pretty much ever been (and more jealous of their pay rates too). The recent NSA disclosures were done by a private contractor. Private contractors caused huge problems with an initially defective and extremely expensive fighter jet that they're still sorting out, and they recently made what will soon be the worst fighter jet ever fielded by a western nation. The Pentagon has been quietly talking about canning that jet for good and axing a lot of contractors (and sequestration might give them the perfect opportunity to do it). We're now on our fourth defense secretary in a row who has a long-term goal of trimming down the department and focusing on a more mobile rapid-response military. All of this adds up to the private defense industry increasingly losing influence, especially over the White House. For a lot of the defense companies, their primary influence is in Congress. And as you can see, it isn't working with Syria.

Obama has a long-known publicly stated distaste to all things WMD, at least since the 80's. He was part of the nuclear freeze movement as a student and his big foreign policy achievement in his first term was an arms control deal with Russia that a lot of people said we didn't need. He exerted quite a lot of personal capital on it for relatively little political gain. I don't see why it's hard to imagine that maybe he just really hates the precedent of people using WMD's with impunity.

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iamntbatman wrote:

On Friday I passed an important milestone in my teaching career: a student shat himself

I'm not saying he's an automaton. I'm saying he's acting in his own interest and his own interest is making people vote for his party and pleasing the wealthy elites he depends on. They are the ones who let him get where he is and they are the ones who can destroy him.

Earthcubed wrote:

I don't see why it's hard to imagine that maybe he just really hates the precedent of people using WMD's with impunity.

So what you're saying is he's out for bloody vengeance. Or out to make an example. Either way it seems pretty unlikely to me. When was the last time America went to war for idealistic reasons (not counting anticommunism that is, which is just ideological self-preservation of capitalism)? Always turned out to be about oil or other economic motivators. Fighting terrorists? Yeah, because they are a hazard to America's economic interests in the middle east.

Borders with Iran and China. The border with China is largely pointless since without going through another country's territory you're funnelled through an extremely tight corridor into areas of China that (from what I understand anyway), are largely empty. Running a war against Iran from Afghanistan would be lunacy. Nice proximity to the Soviet Union except that old chestnut doesn't exactly exist anymore. Far safer places to launch strikes on China, Iran or Russia than Afghanistan. Plus mountains. Mountains and the US' lovely shock and awe, armour heavy warfare don't really mix very well.

Mindshadow - As wonderful for non-Russian supplied gas as that pipeline would be, I highly doubt it justifies a counter-insurgency operation that costs billions a month.

Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 2:59 amPosts: 438Location: United States of America

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2013 8:18 am

It might make sense in the context of trying to isolate Iran for geopolitical purposes. There's a ring of bases around Iran, US allies Turkmenistan and Pakistan as well as US occupied Afghanistan to the east, US allies turkey, US occupied Iraq on the west border. Then we have Syria, Iran's closest ally, whose destabilization would be a strategic victory for the US.

Just look at its location on Google Maps. Pretty nice place to have a military presence, no?

The former British Empire and Soviet Union disagree with you. A society based on clans and mostly small villages with few major strategical cities to conquer and a whole mess of mountains is pretty much impossible to control. And from the standpoint of whoever it is that we decide to launch attacks against from Afghanistan, it would be pretty easy for them to trap us there. U.S. plans for helping Iran in the case of a Soviet invasion in the 70's and 80's largely hinged on our ability to box the Soviets in Afghanistan and Azerbaijan by blowing up mountain bridges and tunnels to block passage---that's it. It didn't even require that many troops, we even had plans to put special operations teams placing "backpack nukes" inside the mountains to make a real mess in a real quick time frame. No need to send entire divisions across the Iranian desert to meet Soviet troops at the border. A few closed mountain passages and the rest is just bombing whoever is trapped there.

Bottom line, even if we were able to conquer the locals, it would be easier for China, Iran or Russia to box us in Afghanistan than it would be for us to launch offensives against them from there.

Bezerko wrote:

Borders with Iran and China. The border with China is largely pointless since without going through another country's territory you're funnelled through an extremely tight corridor into areas of China that (from what I understand anyway), are largely empty. Running a war against Iran from Afghanistan would be lunacy. Nice proximity to the Soviet Union except that old chestnut doesn't exactly exist anymore. Far safer places to launch strikes on China, Iran or Russia than Afghanistan. Plus mountains. Mountains and the US' lovely shock and awe, armour heavy warfare don't really mix very well.

Mindshadow - As wonderful for non-Russian supplied gas as that pipeline would be, I highly doubt it justifies a counter-insurgency operation that costs billions a month.

Not to mention it has been known for a while that the U.S. has pretty large reserves of natural gas. When you add in technological advances related to shale gas, what you walk away with is the almost inescapable fact that the U.S. will not "have" to invade a country for energy resources for 50 years or even longer. In fact, it would be more economically beneficial for us to just export our natural gas for a high price.

I'm pretty sure we only have one or two ground divisions that train for mountain warfare. Maybe even less than one division.

Evangelion2014 wrote:

It might make sense in the context of trying to isolate Iran for geopolitical purposes. There's a ring of bases around Iran, US allies Turkmenistan and Pakistan as well as US occupied Afghanistan to the east, US allies turkey, US occupied Iraq on the west border. Then we have Syria, Iran's closest ally, whose destabilization would be a strategic victory for the US.

Wrong on multiple fronts here. Pakistan is not in any sense really a U.S. ally, they have pretty blatantly gamed the U.S. at every turn. They openly stated a few years ago that if we launched airstrikes on Iran they would side with Iran and kick us out of Pakistan. The only reason Pakistan sided with us in 2001 was on the condition that we provide economic and military "aid" to them (approximately 90% of which they secretly funneled into their nuclear program). We do not have a permanent military presence in Iraq because in case you haven't noticed we completely pulled every soldier not related to embassy security out of the country. We will be doing something similar with Afghanistan next year.

The destabilization of Syria has the potential to be an absolute gold mine for Iran depending on who wins the civil war, which is why Iran is involved in it. It isn't set in stone that Assad losing = Iran losing, his successor could be a government friendly to Iran. You could even have a multiple-state solution to the conflict.

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iamntbatman wrote:

On Friday I passed an important milestone in my teaching career: a student shat himself

Not to mention it has been known for a while that the U.S. has pretty large reserves of natural gas. When you add in technological advances related to shale gas, what you walk away with is the almost inescapable fact that the U.S. will not "have" to invade a country for energy resources for 50 years or even longer. In fact, it would be more economically beneficial for us to just export our natural gas for a high price.

Well, corporations don't bear the risks of war (that's the taxpayers, the soldiers, population of the invaded countries), but they certainly harvest the fruits. The warmongering of the US only makes sense if US foreign policy is dictated by war profiteers. It certainly makes more sense than to think in terms of an autonomous nation that pursues "national" goals. That's romanticism. Resources generate capital, that is reason enough to invade a country, even if they are not "needed".

Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 2:59 amPosts: 438Location: United States of America

Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2013 12:28 am

Earthcubed wrote:

droneriot wrote:

Just look at its location on Google Maps. Pretty nice place to have a military presence, no?

The former British Empire and Soviet Union disagree with you. A society based on clans and mostly small villages with few major strategical cities to conquer and a whole mess of mountains is pretty much impossible to control. And from the standpoint of whoever it is that we decide to launch attacks against from Afghanistan, it would be pretty easy for them to trap us there. U.S. plans for helping Iran in the case of a Soviet invasion in the 70's and 80's largely hinged on our ability to box the Soviets in Afghanistan and Azerbaijan by blowing up mountain bridges and tunnels to block passage---that's it. It didn't even require that many troops, we even had plans to put special operations teams placing "backpack nukes" inside the mountains to make a real mess in a real quick time frame. No need to send entire divisions across the Iranian desert to meet Soviet troops at the border. A few closed mountain passages and the rest is just bombing whoever is trapped there.

Bottom line, even if we were able to conquer the locals, it would be easier for China, Iran or Russia to box us in Afghanistan than it would be for us to launch offensives against them from there.

Bezerko wrote:

Borders with Iran and China. The border with China is largely pointless since without going through another country's territory you're funnelled through an extremely tight corridor into areas of China that (from what I understand anyway), are largely empty. Running a war against Iran from Afghanistan would be lunacy. Nice proximity to the Soviet Union except that old chestnut doesn't exactly exist anymore. Far safer places to launch strikes on China, Iran or Russia than Afghanistan. Plus mountains. Mountains and the US' lovely shock and awe, armour heavy warfare don't really mix very well.

Mindshadow - As wonderful for non-Russian supplied gas as that pipeline would be, I highly doubt it justifies a counter-insurgency operation that costs billions a month.

Not to mention it has been known for a while that the U.S. has pretty large reserves of natural gas. When you add in technological advances related to shale gas, what you walk away with is the almost inescapable fact that the U.S. will not "have" to invade a country for energy resources for 50 years or even longer. In fact, it would be more economically beneficial for us to just export our natural gas for a high price.

I'm pretty sure we only have one or two ground divisions that train for mountain warfare. Maybe even less than one division.

Evangelion2014 wrote:

It might make sense in the context of trying to isolate Iran for geopolitical purposes. There's a ring of bases around Iran, US allies Turkmenistan and Pakistan as well as US occupied Afghanistan to the east, US allies turkey, US occupied Iraq on the west border. Then we have Syria, Iran's closest ally, whose destabilization would be a strategic victory for the US.

Wrong on multiple fronts here. Pakistan is not in any sense really a U.S. ally, they have pretty blatantly gamed the U.S. at every turn. They openly stated a few years ago that if we launched airstrikes on Iran they would side with Iran and kick us out of Pakistan. The only reason Pakistan sided with us in 2001 was on the condition that we provide economic and military "aid" to them (approximately 90% of which they secretly funneled into their nuclear program). We do not have a permanent military presence in Iraq because in case you haven't noticed we completely pulled every soldier not related to embassy security out of the country. We will be doing something similar with Afghanistan next year.

The destabilization of Syria has the potential to be an absolute gold mine for Iran depending on who wins the civil war, which is why Iran is involved in it. It isn't set in stone that Assad losing = Iran losing, his successor could be a government friendly to Iran. You could even have a multiple-state solution to the conflict.

So what's the US Aim here then? To isolate iran? To try to assure that whatever comes out the other end of syria is helpful to the US?

Man the rebels have to be pissed. Both the "legitimate" rebels and the foreign fighters.

Oh well. Horrible image problem on Obama's part but even if Assad doesn't completely eliminate his stockpile I think this means the U.S. doesn't get involved militarily, which is a good thing for us and the whole region. Fucking powder keg with both of the world's most genius terror groups involved.

It seems to me this also means Assad wins.

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iamntbatman wrote:

On Friday I passed an important milestone in my teaching career: a student shat himself

Well, it looks like everyone's going to go for the 'place the chemical arms under international control and get rid of them!' plan.

Looking at the whole thing, as well as the history of the conflict, if there ever was a time when direct military intervention was the best solution, that time is now past. IMO nothing short of a full scale occupation would have even the slimmest chance of imposing any sort of regional stability and that is a good idea for none of the players in this game. I suppose the status quo will have to messily resolve itself, probably with everyone's spy agency trying to tilt the balance this way or that.

Loss of human life and futility of war aside, I actually thought it would be interesting to see how any military intervention would play out, purely from the viewpoint of taking an interest in the dynamics of modern warfare. The USA seems to have fared extremely poorly in actual ground and pound combat, preferring to use their big budget to carpet-bomb the shit out of everything. Wonder if they're going to try and get better at that, or just spend even more on said bombs.

From a purely combat perspective (as opposed to counter-insurgency/occupation) the US has done very well... Both Gulf Wars are a testament to US military might and Afghanistan's invasion wasn't far off.

Counter-insurgency/occupation are the only ways nowadays to test the actual mettle of the troops(because that's where most of the actual man to man firefights occur) and to a lesser extent, the skill of the generals. Almost no actual fighting occurred in both Gulf Wars aside from Iraqi infantry surrendering to American armour(because most of their mechanized units had been bombed into oblivion), or token resistance by the barely working Russian T-72s that the regime had(not to mention the average Red Legion warrior wasn't even issued a cleaning kit for his rifle, and those are as essential as ammunition, from personal experience)

Oh, this is grand. The German government, both the old and the current coalition, approved the total supply of 111 tons of chemical components that can be used to create Sarin to Syria between 2002 and 2006. Here's the article (in German): http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/chemika ... en100.html

I honestly hope the rebel alliance don't win this one. Assad's regime is hardly candy and roses, but I bet it's a million miles better than yet another Islamic theocracy. Supreme Overlord Obama will probably arm them, which I'm sure will work out well for America, as history has shown us.

I honestly hope the rebel alliance don't win this one. Assad's regime is hardly candy and roses, but I bet it's a million miles better than yet another Islamic theocracy. Supreme Overlord Obama will probably arm them, which I'm sure will work out well for America, as history has shown us.

Didn't even know that. Seriously, God Emperor Obama has some balls asking for Assad to weaken himself while he strengthens his enemies. Israel has already had a bunch of attacks on Syrian soil over the last few months with zero reprisals.

Is there more context required there, though? Obv. I can't read German super well but the chemicals listed seem somewhat generic.

It's dual use, it can also be used for civil purposes. But I wouldn't be surprised if this is yet another case of gross negligence from my Government. After all we're one of Europe's biggest arms exporters. And we knew that Syria had a chemical weapons program back then.